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Kansas Community Hit Hard by Alzheimer’s Finding Help with Music

By Bryan Thompson
Published January 28, 2016 at 6:30 AM CST
Brooke Beier, a student at Linn High School, helps Beverly Milburn with her music selection at Linn Community Nursing Home. Beier and other high school students volunteer with the program, which uses music to soothe people with Alzheimer’s disease. (Photo by Marcy Oehmke, Linn High School)
Brooke Beier, a student at Linn High School, helps Beverly Milburn with her music selection at Linn Community Nursing Home. Beier and other high school students volunteer with the program, which uses music to soothe people with Alzheimer’s disease. (Photo by Marcy Oehmke, Linn High School)

An estimated five million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease. That number is projected to nearly triple by 2050, as the population trends older. Currently, there is no cure and no treatments to slow its progress. But there are some therapies that can help those who suffer. One of them involves music... and it's catching on in a north-central Kansas community hit hard by the disease. Heartland Health Monitor’s Bryan Thompson has the story.

Learn more about this story by visiting the KHI News Service website.

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Bryan Thompson is a reporter for the KHI News Service in Topeka. He's also a contributor to Heartland Health Monitor, a consortium of public media news outlets that report on health and health policy issues in the Midwest.
Tags
Health News Clay CenterAlzheimer's diseasemusic therapy
Bryan Thompson
Bryan Thompson has been KPR's Health Reporter since 2000. He's a lifelong Kansan, and a graduate of Wichita State University. He's been involved in radio news longer than he'd care to admit, serving as news director at stations in El Dorado, Liberal, and Salina before joining KPR. He and his wife, Cindy, are the parents of six outstanding children--one of whom now looks down on them from above. In his spare time, Bryan enjoys music and sports.
See stories by Bryan Thompson